Media completely guessing on Japan

by Wilson

Thursday, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:07 PM EDT

Every few minutes a new headline pops up about how Japan is inching closer and closer to a total nuclear disaster. “Meltdown!” and “Hail Mary!” are appearing in headlines meant to describe the efforts of the Japanese to control and rebuild following the earthquake. And why is the media only focusing on the reactor explosion when there are so many other stories they could be covering on Japan? Glenn discussed how the media was completely guessing on the facts during radio this morning.

“So Stu’s been trying to explain this to me for a while and I’m just trying to get my arms around it. They’re dumping water from a helicopter, scooping it up out of seat and dumping it on the containment facility,” Glenn said on radio.

Stu explained, “Yes, because one of the alternate ways to cool it is not to cool the actual nuclear material but to put water outside of the containment facility. So you are essentially cooling the containment facility from the outside.”

Neither Glenn nor Stu seemed convinced that, with all the barriers between the outside and the nuclear material, that dumping water that far out would have much of an effect. Nevertheless, Glenn said this was an actual MIT professor.

Glenn then attempted to draw (it’s radio, Glenn) what seemed to be happening. He then described his pictures and what seemed to be happening.

“That steel shed that they had around it, you know, the square building. Got it? That blew off and we were told don’t worry because you still have the‑‑ you still have the real containment facility, which is like eight feet of concrete around it and two layers of steel, and then the inner workings inside of that. So they’re like, don’t worry about it because you still have the inner‑‑ you know, you still have that core. The last I heard, that wasn’t even cracked. Then they said maybe one crack in one of them. Well, you’re not dumping water on eight feet of concrete, two layers of steel. You have to get to that inner jug,” he said.

Stu joked, “I think we’re now kind of explaining two different things. This is why you need a quote from a nuclear physicist and not just us guessing at it.”

Nevertheless, something about the power plant in Japan didn’t seem to be adding up with Glenn. “I don’t trust the Japanese government because they may be so overwhelmed that they don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t think the Japanese are lying to everybody, but then again, their whole economy could be at stake. So it’s in their best interest, I guess, not to say the truth.”

“We have a surgeon general saying yeah, you know what, if you are going to live in California, maybe you should get some iodine tablets. That’s insane,” Glenn added.
“That’s more dangerous. Unless there’s a nuclear disaster going on in California that I don’t know about,” Stu said.

Stu then updated with more information on the helicopters dropping water onto the reactor. “My understanding is that the helicopters are dumping the water on reactor four. Reactor four is the one with the spent fuel rods. That was the one that was not on‑line when the earthquake happened. That’s one of the surprising issue out of this. It wasn’t actually the reactors with all these containment facilities. It’s been this one with spent fuel rods and that water is boiling up and that’s why they’re dumping it on that one. The thing I was talking about is the steel vessel. They can pump sea water in around the vessel rather than in it to cool it from the outside, but not the giant concrete structure you’re talking about. Not the weird phallic symbol you just drew.”